What the abstract mentions only sideways is that a key use of these properties is production of explosives - nitroglycerin, trinitrotoluene (TNT) or nitrocellulose (modern gunpowder) come to mind, and indeed, they store a lot of energy. Note all have "nitro" in the name.
At this point I'm not sure you care that only exhaust gas is nitrogen.
Found in the warhead table, yes: this is "cleaner" explosives, but military is not spending billions to safe the environment. But get a higher TNT-equivalent per kilogram.
Eventually someone will make this.
This is one reason that even azides are not used in this capacity anymore, and metallic nitrogen would be orders of magnitude less stable. Not to mention requiring special conditions to not explode, like a laser trap or extreme pressures.
A visible amount of the thing wouldn’t even need the fission part.
Relative to the scale of how much fertilizer humanity uses, there's just not all that much demand for explosives.
Lots of nitrogen molecules together almost always has a military use, even if it’s not the primary purpose.
That's an impressive amount of energy, 9.2e6 J/kg—on the same order as carbon combustion. Wonder if it's a potential rocket fuel additive (it probably isn't, but fun to ask). By comparison, O₃ is "only" 3.0e6 J/kg above diatomic oxygen.
> "is unlikely to decompose through [quantum mechanical tunneling], with an estimated half-life of N6 of more than 132 years at 77 K (Supplementary Table 4). At 298 K, the computed half-life still amounts to 35.7 ms"
Better hope that fridge doesn't fail.
Still, one commenter mentioned this is too explosive to be used as an explosive. That kind of warns me against thinking too much about this.
> Warning! Silver azide and halogen azides are extremely hazardous and explosive. Such compounds should be handled with utmost care and only in very small quantities (<5 mmol). Appropriate safety precautions (blast screens, face shields, Kevlar gloves, soundproof earmuffs and protective leather clothing) are necessary. Make sure to eliminate static electricity before handling. It is also crucial to avoid friction and light exposure and prevent any contact with metals during sample handling to ensure safety.
That is, please do the synthesis in full armor, in the dark and don't touch anything more than strictly necessary.
Also wear ear protection, because it's still going to go bang.
I like the green energy twist in the intro too. "High-energy materials" is an euphemism chemists engaged in weapons research like to use. I went to some conference talks about high energy materials before, and research presented at those talks was always funded by various defence agencies. But maybe that's just a North American thing, this particular group only acknowledges funding from the innocuous Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
Certainly not a process that can be made simple, safe and efficient for use in a battery: explosives or rocket fuel are the only possible kinds of "clean energy-storage materials".
Hmmm, chlorine and bromine - off to a good start - then we come to silver azide.
"Azide" immediately rings all my Derek Lowe bells, and yeah... it's exactly what you'd expect.
> We're talking high-nitrogen compounds here (a specialty of Klapötke's group), and the question is not whether such things are going to be explosive hazards. (That's been settled by their empirical formulas, which generally look like typographical errors). The question is whether you're going to be able to get a long enough look at the material before it realizes its dream of turning into an expanding cloud of hot nitrogen gas.
They are not actually serious about this, right?
I feel if that directly acknowledging Klapötke of all people is basically a thinly veiled concession that watever you synthesized is too explosive to even be used as an explosive. As seems to be the case here.
Is there even a remotely possibility for this to be used in any practical application?
Noneteless, impressive paper, and getting that abstract into Nature is basically an achievement on its own already.
Not useful otherwise yet unless there's some special synthesis requiring it that cannot be done in any other way.
gus_massa•7mo ago
> Detonation calculation details
[1] See for example another molecule with a different shape but the same symmetry in https://www.cup.uni-muenchen.de/ch/compchem/geom/sym_C2h.htm...
bilsbie•7mo ago
gus_massa•7mo ago
meepmorp•7mo ago
lazide•7mo ago
gus_massa•7mo ago
rini17•7mo ago
gmcharlt•7mo ago